'Tis the season to be tacky: Woman's bird-flipping light display is no dove of peace (Kelly Kazek)

Y’all know this is the time of year I like to write one of those touching columns designed to rival a Hallmark-card commercial and leave you in a puddle of your own tears on the floor. It’s what the season is all about.

But call me Scrooge, or the Grinch, or Megan Fox (hey, a girl can dream). I just don’t have it in me this year.

The world seems suddenly filled with meanies and, frankly, I wish someone would break their crayons.

We all know those people who refuse to be filled with the spirit of Christmas because, well, they are full of something else.

Our first example is that of Sarah Henderson, a Denham Springs, La., mother of four, who in November installed a light display on her roof that contained a message for her neighbors. This one didn’t proclaim season’s greetings but instead – to use the vernacular – flipped them the bird.

Henderson, whose kids range in ages from 4 to 16, said she was expressing herself to the neighbors, with whom she has an ongoing dispute. However, neighbors called the police who ordered removal of the middle-finger lights and threatened a $400 fine.

Henderson removed the lights, but someone called the ACLU, whose Louisiana representative sent a letter to Denham Springs police reminding them that the Court of Appeals presiding over Louisiana finds the “projected middle finger” to “convey a message that is sometimes made even more expressive by its bold freedom from a garb of words.”

Hmmmm.

The bird-flipping light display is definitely naked of language. It is certainly bold. But I don’t think the framers of our Constitution ever considered the right to bare middle fingers.

There are sooo many questions here: What kinds of hoodlums would do such a thing? Was there no security watching the goat?

And, most importantly, what the heck is a Yule Goat?

Apparently, Swedes have a tradition that predates Christianity about a Yule Goat, which in the 19th century evolved into the male of the household dressing up as a goat each Christmas and delivering gifts. After frightening a couple of generations of Swedish children, now they just build a giant goat statue from straw and place it in the town square.

As a resident of a country that uses a groundhog to predict the coming of spring, I don’t judge.

The Gävle Yule Goat: Every few years, an arsonist gets Sweden's goat.

The most famous Yule Goat in Sweden is built each year in the village of Gävle and it also has the distinction of being the World’s Largest Goat. But, being built of straw, it invites those mischievous people who are perpetually on the naughty list to wreak havoc.

Every few years, someone gets Sweden's goat.

Firefighters hoped to thwart the arsonists this year by dousing the Yule Goat in water so it would freeze overnight but apparently goats don’t freeze on a whim. Someone set a match to the festive critter and now Gävlovians must carry on without it. Perhaps they will gather in the square on Christmas morning, hold hands like the Who-villians and sing: “Christmas Day is in our grasp, even if our goat is a pile of ash.”

It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Speaking of The Grinch: Last on our list of dastardly holiday mayhem is an item about McDonald's trying to steal Christmas. Yep, the burger conglomerate is encouraging its franchises to open on Christmas Day because, read this closely, the company needs the money.

It’s like saying Oprah had to borrow her neighbor’s screwdriver because the local Sears was closed and she couldn’t buy one right then … the Sears, I mean.

UPI.com reported Monday that Mickey D’s hopes to make up for a 2.2 percent sales drop in October and those franchises that stay open are predicted to make $5,500 in sales each on Christmas Day.

Well, if it’s for $5,500, sure.

Does the drive-through worker really need to see her kid open that Furby on Christmas morning? Surely that can wait if someone on the way to Grandma’s is craving a breakfast burrito before driving over the river and through the woods.

I know I am not business savvy but couldn’t McDonald’s make up that amount of change by having a one-day McRib sale?

Better yet, McDonald’s could just borrow from Oprah.

Even better, sell her a couple thousand McRibs.

Otherwise, McDonald’s franchisees may wake up the day after Christmas to an unexpected message from employees: Lots of middle-finger salutes.